He left her the next morning, bound hand and foot to his bed, saying to her supposedly sleeping form, "You will have to earn the freedom of my tent by good behavior. Although I'm hardly worried that you're going to do me any harm, I'm concerned that you might do yourself harm or that your defiant antics might cause me to accidentally hurt you. Otherwise, you will remain bound to my bed."

Last night, Ciaran had literally made her sleep—what little sleep she had been granted—while cocooned by him, so that any time she tried to move, he woke up, but also with her hands and feet bound.

There was no response from her, but then she'd barely said anything to him since he'd found her, beyond the occasional times when he drove her beyond her own stubborn pride and she couldn't help but beg him to stop doing whatever it was that he was doing to her at the moment.

He wished, he thought, she was asleep—by the time he'd allowed her to rest, she'd looked like she desperately needed it, but he literally couldn't get enough of her. It was as if, having had her, instead of sating him somewhat, he knew what he was missing when he wasn't buried to the hilt inside her.

When his knot had died down after he'd first taken her last night, he had disengaged himself from her—removing the collar, the ropes and the shackles at her feet, for which he had thought she might thank him, as he was under no obligation to do so whatsoever, especially considering her behavior so far. But she had simply lain there in a heap before crumpling and curling further in on herself. Ciaran found himself staring down at her for long moments, until he shook his head and rose, divesting himself of the rest of his clothes and cleaning himself up a bit. As if he didn't quite trust her—and he didn't—his kept a sharp eye on her, and it seemed to him that every time he looked at her, she had grown even smaller, as if she was hoping that, eventually, she'd be able to fold herself into non-existence.

She wasn't even crying any longer, not even those sniffles that usually remained long afterwards, which females often used to gain their way, in his experience.

It had been a good long while since he'd taken his ease with any one person in particular—preferring to apply himself to his profession and using the occasional camp follower only when necessity dictated.

Now, he needn't look elsewhere. She was his to breed, which he certainly intended to do.

But she was also his responsibility.

So, after seeing to his own comfort, he called a guard in—which, he saw out of the corner of his eye made her still unnaturally, as if she didn't want him to notice her—and ordered that some food be brought to his tent.

Then he took the cloth he'd used on himself and wet it liberally over the ornate old washbowl, wringing it out and coming over to where she was practically clinging to the pole. He pried her away from it so that he could lift her onto his bed. He was both surprised and wary that she still offered not one bit of resistance at what he was doing. She remained in that little bundle she'd become, stubbornly refusing to let him open her up until he sighed, growling, "Do I need to give you another spanking, little girl? Perhaps this time with the paddle? Considering how your thighs and bum look, I wouldn't choose that for myself, but if you don't start cooperating with me immediately, I won't hesitate in the least to give you another layer of welts on top of the ones you have to help you think the next time about whether or not you want to obey me."

Obviously hating that she was doing so, Ebby wept very softly—which seemed even more piteous to him than if she'd been openly wailing—the entire time as she unfurled herself in front of him, doing scrupulously no more than just that. She was surprised that all he seemed to want to do to her—at the moment, anyway—was to clean her up. She was covered in her own juices as it and his spunk ran in rivulets down the insides of her thighs, not to mention the muck and blood she'd been wearing when she was brought in here.

And she trembled, just slightly, every once in a while, as if she was succeeding in holding most of the evidence of her own fears from him, but barely.

Just as he'd gotten her mostly cleaned up—especially between those beautiful legs of hers, where a cool compress had done wonders to soothe her overheated and overused flesh—the food arrived and she crawled under the covers as he laughed heartily at her.

The food was placed on his dining room table—a nice, if a necessarily small, one that was the spoils of war from another campaign entirely.

When he would have called her to eat, he realized that he had no idea what her name was, so he threw the covers off the bed to expose her, then sank down on it near her, catching her wrist when she would have dived off the bed to get away from him.

Again, he brought her to him by holding a limb captive in his strong hand. When she was close next to him, he asked, "I am Ciaran, Colonel-Commander of this battalion. You may call me Sir, but what is your name, girl?"

She made no response, as if she hadn't heard him, and found herself over his lap getting another spanking.

Her belated screams of "Ebba! Ebby! Everyone calls me Ebby!" did nothing to alleviate her third punishment in less than as many hours.

It was a much shorter one, though, and, within a few minutes, he guided her forcibly over to the table, saying almost casually as he did, "Refusing to answer me is disobedience by omission, Ebby, which is no less naughty than commission. I'm sure you're more than smart enough to realize that."

He could have seated her at the table—there were four nice chairs—but instead, he put her on his knee and tried to feed her from his plate as she sat there sobbing from having been disciplined yet again.

"I am fully capable of feeding myself."

"No, you're not, as you will not be allowed any utensils, as they could be used as weapons."

"So can anything, if you're determined."

"I am fully aware of that, which is why you won't be allowed to do anything but be bred by me, nothing more."

Ebby frowned deeply at that pronouncement.

Ciaran was offering her a piece of one of his prized apples. Fruit of any kind was almost as rare as a female omega. She took it, but then presented it to his mouth, and, although it took him a moment to ascertain the meaning of her action, he laughed when he did.

"You don't trust me anymore than I do you, hmmm?" He chuckled, taking a bite out of the apple and returning it to her. "Well, have no fear along those lines, little one. The last thing I want to do is to kill you."

She wasn't sure whether he realized it or not, but in admitting that, he had given her a certain amount of very powerful knowledge that she intended to use to her own advantage eventually.

He had thought they might have to have another battle over whether or not she was going to eat, but she surprised him yet again by—after making him take a bite out of everything before she did—eating almost everything he gave her, until she finally shook her head and refused the last bite of a prized raisin cake.

No, she wasn't going to refuse to eat, because she knew she was going to need energy when the time came and she couldn't be emaciated when the opportunity presented itself, as much as she wanted to waste away in front of him, and she absolutely did, on some levels.

Otherwise, she wanted what every other young woman did—the safety and security that had been missing in almost every woman's life since the world had come to an end—omegas in particular. She wanted an absence of the fear and dread that she'd had to live with since she'd become a sentient little girl who'd had to come to grips with the knowledge that she was something that turned all men into beasts and who would take her freedom—what little there was of it in her life—and turn her into an object for their own desires or their own gain.

And now, here she was, in one of the exact situations the women who had raised her had used to terrify her into obedience, and into learning how to take care of herself.

She didn't know how she was going to get out, but she was determined to do just that, or die trying.

Ciaran wasn't finished eating himself, but he wouldn't allow her to get up when she tried to remove herself from his lap. Instead, he held her there until he was through, then lifted her up—this time carrying her in a more normal fashion—and placed her down on his bed, and she came face to face with the fact that she had left a large wet spot on his thigh where she'd been forced to sit as their combined essences continued to seep sluggishly out of her.

She again tried to bolt, but it was easy enough for him to catch her with a humiliatingly small effort on his part, and she found herself right back where she'd started, and this time his hand on her lower belly kept her right where he wanted her.

"You are the quietest woman I've ever known," he almost accused, and to which she predictably said nothing, avoiding his gaze and apparently preferring to stare at the hands in her lap. "I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or a bad one."

He absently clapped his hands, and a man came in to remove the remnants of their meal. "I do not wish to be disturbed this evening for any reason other than the camp being under attack," he ordered without looking up.

"Yes, sir!" the man answered promptly.

The man's appearance had a strange effect on the naked Ebby, causing her to throw herself against Ciaran, as if she was trying to hide herself from him in embarrassment.

His arms automatically came around her to hold her, but as soon as the guard left, she moved to sit as far away from him as he would allow.

And suddenly, she was free! Ignoring her deep suspicions that this was entirely too easy, Ebby rolled off the bed and headed for the door. Ciaran rose to rummage in his trunks, coming up with several lengths of very soft but sturdy material, letting slip in a deceptively casual tone, "While you are safe in here and safer still than you ever have been in your life now that you're mine, I'm sure you realize that there are still Alphas out there—even within my own camp—who would tear you up in a minute, given the chance. Or worse."

Ebby had rolled her eyes at the idea that she was safe in here and was of a mind that he qualified as "or worse", continuing to walk quickly towards the door, eying him every once in a while, as if she couldn't believe that he was going to let her do that. It was his last words that slowed her to a stop. She was left cruelly standing in front of the very door that would take her away from him, her hand on the knob, but she couldn't quite force herself to step out of it for fear that he was right.

"If you think you're being treated badly now, then I invite you to walk—naked—through my camp, keeping in mind that these men know that if they touch you, they'll die, and for some of them, even that won't be enough to save you."

And what's more, she knew he was right, because she'd seen men slain right in front of her—and had slain no small few herself—who would have done nothing less and probably much worse than he had.

She felt more defeated by what he'd just said—by the stark realization of how much she'd already lost—that she couldn't move. She felt frozen to the spot, her body still—forever, it now seemed—throbbing and aching for want of him—for want of an act that she craved but now knew she hated, and that hurt her in almost incomprehensible ways.

Was this to be her life? Would it, perhaps, be better to simply take the opportunity and run out into the night, to let fate decide for her what would happen to her? A quick death would be preferable to a life of subjugation and servitude, wouldn't it?

When she'd just about made up her mind to go out anyway, she'd already missed her chance because he was right next to her—appalled that she was actually in the act of taking another step towards the door and turning the knob before he scooped her up and brought her back to the bed with him.

Ebby fought him with everything she had, even knowing that it was useless to do so and that she was wasting the precious little energy she still had.

But, no matter what her body said, she did not want him to do that awful thing to her again. She couldn't let him do it.

Regardless of her wholehearted commitment to fighting him, she ended up less than a minute later secured with gentle yet firm bonds around wrists that were pressed together then caught somehow at the head of the bed on a very short tether. He was staring down at her raptly, his eyes drinking in everything they hadn't been able to when he'd taken her the first time.

She was small and deliciously fine—especially considering how hard she'd fought in defense of herself—with long hair that was so yellow it was almost white and had, at one time, he could see, been neatly braided and pinned up. Now it was dirty and flecked with blood, but that made her no less alluring to him.

Silver eyes—red rimmed and puffy from crying—stared at him, framed by criminal amounts of dark, curly lashes, shining out of the kind of pale face one usually only found on a baby. Her shoulders were narrow and somewhat too small for her bust, arms well-muscled but not overly so, hands showing signs of work that he—for some reason—wished they didn't.

In fact, they showed signs of her struggles since she'd gotten here—what remained of her nails were broken and bleeding, and he knew it was because she'd been grabbing at the carpet to stop him from getting to her. Granted, that was also probably a part of trying to find the weapon she'd secreted amongst them, but still.

If he had been able to build her for himself, he couldn't have done any better. Her bottom was generous for her size and he already knew it could take quite a walloping, her hips well rounded, thighs and legs in proportion to the rest of her, and terribly cute feet.

As fair as her skin was, though, it was far from perfect. He could recognize several scars from various maladies that afflicted the population now—as there were no more of the "shots" his grandfather had told him there had been in his time. He'd had a funny word for them, something that started with a "v" that he couldn't remember.

Ciaran also recognized the ugly scars from at least two knife wounds and what looked to have been an arrow, perhaps?

Oddly, they didn't detract from her perfection in the least, as far as he was concerned. The scars only made her seem just that much more delicate.

"Did you get these from whoever taught you to fight?" he heard himself ask, not really expecting an answer as he lay a finger on the longest of them that stretched down over her ribs for about three inches of puckered red skin. "If you had been mine at the time, I would have worn your bottom out for putting yourself in such danger."

For some reason, Ebby couldn't keep quiet at what he was saying, and she snorted. "You would have preferred that I ended up—oh, I don't know—somewhere like here, being held captive by someone like, well, you, perhaps, who, as you threatened, wouldn't treat me as 'well' as you have?"

Despite her sarcastic tone, his voice was far from angry when he pointed out softly, "But even with all of your skills, you ended up here, anyway. Truthfully, it was only a matter of time. Was it worth it, I wonder, to try so hard to escape what you surely recognize is your fate?"

The words hissed out of her. "Yes, it was. And it is."

His fingers travelled to the next scar, on her thigh. "Even though your wounds must've hurt you terribly at the time?"

She had been holding her body taut as he touched her, but all of a sudden, just as she began to answer him in a voice that was devoid of all emotion, she relaxed completely, closing her eyes. "Nothing, and no one, has ever hurt me as much as you have this evening, in every conceivable way."

This time, there was no forthcoming reply from him, not that she had really expected one.

But then he whispered so softly that she thought she might have imagined it, "I shall have to see if I can remedy that, perhaps." His lips pressed gently against the side of her breast.

Ebby immediately became tense again at the thought. "I doubt it. Why would you even bother with a woman who doesn't want you?"

For the second time, he reached between her legs, more gently than he had previously, to dip his fingers into the river that it seemed had always flowed there. "This is ample evidence to the contrary, my dear. I understand that you don't want me or even like me. I don't care whether you like me—that's immaterial. Your dislike of me can do nothing to disrupt our bond. It's your body that I want, that I'm going to keep constantly full of my babies, and you can't deny that it craves me, that it wants exactly what I want, and it will go so far as to help me breed you—each and every time—while doing its best to disrupt your own willful defiance of me—and thus your own nature."

He saw her cringe at his words, then force herself not to. She would have made a magnificent soldier.

Ciaran was nothing if not patient, when necessary, though—as any good leader of men was—and he took his time with her this time when he hadn't before, knowing he was going to have to hold himself to a higher standard this time than the last. There could be no losing control, no simply slaking himself on her. It yielded highly unsatisfactory results, and he fully intended to get an army of sons on her—starting as soon as possible.

He could barely wait to see her flat little belly heavy with his child, those beautiful breasts swollen with milk to feed it.

And he would do absolutely anything necessary to achieve his goal.

Luckily, pleasuring a woman was one of the few arts he prided himself on being able to accomplish with a certain amount of skill, and it was imperative that—despite the challenges—he brought her to a full orgasm every time he bred her—preferably many more than one.

So, he set himself the challenge of doing just that.

He'd already noted several things that she liked—having heard her breath increase when he'd played with her nipples and when his fingers had found the heart of her pleasure, but he didn't start with either of those. Rather, he began to kiss and lick her everywhere. Her skin was very nearly as delectable as her cream. His tongue found every vulnerable crevice except her mouth, not willing to give her the opportunity to bite him, although he certainly hoped that he would be able to trust her enough to kiss her soon.

The hollow of her throat, her ears and just behind them, the insides of her elbows and everywhere in between was slightly dampened and thoroughly kissed, leaving a trail of gooseflesh behind him, those enticing nipples peaked long before he got to them.

Ciaran was alert to any and all changes in her, and he felt her relax all at once again with a soft sigh not long after he'd begun, although her eyes remained closed—at least until he captured one impudent berry between his lips and began to suckle very gently, slowly building the intensity until she couldn't help but arch beneath him.

He thought his cock was going to snap clean off; it went so fully rigid when she did that, and especially at the slight mewl that had escaped her otherwise tightly closed lips.

He lingered over her nipples, neither escaping his tender attentions as he heard her body welcoming them as he patiently wrestled away her hard-won control over herself. She continued to offer herself up to greet his lips occasionally, and there was no ignoring the soft sighs that drifted over him.

Ciaran would have sworn that, as he left those beautiful breasts, she issued a murmur of protest unlike any he'd heard from her so far, although it was quickly quashed.

He had been lying on top of her legs as he had ministered to her, but when he wanted to move down her body, he found that she had crossed them beneath him at some point, and seemed disinclined to allow him to open them to himself.

Without a word, he simply reached beneath her with both hands to grab the part of her body that was no doubt still in the most distress, squeezing cruelly, fingertips digging into the bruised flesh as she gasped and heaved beneath him, her legs naturally falling open. He took the opportunity to tuck one of his feet between hers. From there, he was able to use his own legs to keep hers wide open as he dragged himself down her body, deliberately rubbing his coarse body hair over her most delicate area, made even more so by his recent possession of her, and bathing himself in the stream of their juices that still dripped out of her.

Ebby couldn't believe what he seemed to want to do, judging by the position he was arranging himself in. He couldn't possibly be going to put his mouth there, could he?

But then he put an arm across the backs of thighs that bore the livid marks he'd subjected her to, holding them back to expose her to him even more fully.

The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them—before she knew she was going to say them. "No—please—don't!"

He raised his head, and she wished she'd never seen the evil grin he gave her. "I will do anything to you that I please, little one, and there will never be anything that you can do to stop me from doing so." With that, he put both hands to holding her legs up and apart as he eagerly dipped his mouth between her legs, lapping greedily up the inside of one swollen lip and down the other, avoiding the places he knew she most wanted—or rather didn't want—him to touch, for the moment. He suckled and nipped here and there, even licked her little bottom hole, which made her squeal and try to wrench herself violently away from him, although she barely moved at all.

Then he began from the bottom—literally—flattening his tongue against every bit of her that he could and dragging it slowly up her groove, not stopping as it became even more sopping wet at her entrance, not even at her clit. Although, he noted that the stifled sighs and moans she tried unsuccessfully to conceal from him had increased in frequency and volume as his soft wet tongue had coursed over her there. He took his time making it all the way to the top of her lips, where he nibbled at her a bit, scraping his hair covered chin over points lower that made her squeal, making the return trip with just the tip of his tongue, instead, to concentrate the sensations.

This time, he did stop—not at her clit, but at her opening, literally drinking in and lapping her up before continuing to slip further down and press against her little flower. She was panting heavily from the rest of his efforts, but she still tried to protest at that.

It was easy to tell what she responded to the most—the repetition of his tongue exploring her cleft boldly for long, torturous moments or the times he thrust his tongue into her, just to make her yelp and struggle to get away from it. He was gratified to realize he could drive her—at least a bit—past her stubborn resistance in both of those ways, but it was when he finally began worrying the little knot of nerves he had avoided as long as he could—perhaps too long—that she nearly went off like a rocket.

Apparently, she was further down the sensual path than he had calculated, so he didn't spend as much time there as he'd planned. He wanted to keep her needy and lustful, but not so much that she came too soon. He wanted her aching for him and what he could do for her, because before there would be the ultimate ecstasy that he hoped to bring to her, there would be more pain. Ultimately, he wanted what he had deprived himself of before—that first exquisite clench of her little cunny around him and then the subsequent nearly as strong ones that would make him shoot his seed whether he wanted to or not.

And he would make himself such a student of what raised her passions that he'd have it from her—each and every time—from now on.

Dear God, she wished he would stop touching her! Large parts of her never wanted him to stop, but her voice of reason—what there still was of it—wanted her to break down and beg him to stop again.

But she wouldn't.

She couldn't.

She was so much at war with herself, she didn't really know what was going to come out of her mouth when she opened it, so she tried to remain as quiet as she could, but she was failing badly on all fronts.

This time, though, when he turned her onto her tummy, she knew exactly what was coming, and the humiliating words tumbled out of her mouth in a mortifying stream that she managed to keep at a whisper, but not soft enough that he didn't hear it.

"No—oh—please—no—don't—please!"

In a humiliatingly short amount of time, she found herself right back where she'd been once before, with her head pressed into the soft mattress and her bright red tail in the air.

"Oh, yes, Ebby," he whispered into her ear as she could feel her own body giving way to him slightly against her will merely at having been put into this very submissive position. Her own desires had been brought to a fever pitch by his demanding fingers and lips on her nipples, to say nothing of that nosy tongue of his that found almost every single spot in that terribly private place that drove her mad—very nearly beyond her ability to resist. "You are mine, and this is exactly where you belong—beneath me, presenting yourself to me to be bred, literally dripping with juices that are going to help me plant my seed in you."

His mouth was hovering over the sensitive spot where neck became shoulder as he growled, "And you want me to do exactly that. Even though you know now that it's going to hurt like the devil, you still want me to do it to you because your own body makes the pain feel so good to you. How hard that must be for you to accept. You crave my cock forcing your greedy little cunny open, my barb sunk unbearably deep into that very sensitive spot inside you, and my knot nearly splitting you open. But, because you're my omega, your body, instead, locks us together as you spasm uncontrollably in the most intensely painful pleasure you'll ever experience in your life while I pump my sperm into you and your own body clamps down on me to hold me right in the very best spot—the place where it's most likely that my seed will succeed in taking root in your womb."

With that, he surged into her—more slowly than he had previously, but still filling her up almost abruptly, making her gasp with it as he stretched a passage that was even tighter than it had been from his prior use of her—swollen, not to mention quite sore—around him again.

But then, as he seated himself within her, she gave a long, low sigh of pure pleasure accompanied by a deep shudder, and he nearly crowed with pride.

And, for Ebby, the battle was truly lost in those seconds. Not that she wouldn't still try to resist what was happening to her—she would. But she would do so with the knowledge that she had already been utterly defeated.

"Good girl," he encouraged, thrusting forward a bit then pulling back to set himself deeply into her as she howled and tried to get away from the intense, sharp sting, but he held her still, easily finding and tweaking her nipples to distract her a bit, then, as he could hear the bliss building in her once again, his fingers descended on her distended clit.

Ciaran knew the moment he had her beyond a doubt—when she first began to rock herself into his thrusts, to relax beneath him and accept him into her body, despite the pain—and because of it.

Her softening towards him spurred him on, and he pressed himself as far into her as he could as the bottom of his manhood began to swell, widening her relatively untried flesh.

Ebby was panting and having a hard time with it—he seemed even bigger this time, or perhaps it was her already irritated flesh.

"Please—please—no—it hurts!"

He wet his fingers in her slick to bring them up to her swollen nub, slipping them over the top and around the sides. Her breath caught loudly as he continued to tease her, and he felt her body gathering itself around him as he forced her closer and closer to her climax, her small body taut as a bowstring beneath him.

"That's it," he said out loud as he began to pump himself powerfully within her. "There's nothing you can do to stop it now. It's going to feel so much better than it did. Relax and accept it. This is your place, beneath your Alpha, taking what I give you—what you crave. This is your destiny, and I will make certain that you fulfill it."

When it happened, there were no words to describe it. Ebby was beyond words, anyway, beyond thinking and in a world of twisted ecstasy. The bliss eclipsed the discomfort for long, blindingly white hot moments of agonizing pleasure that it seemed were never going to end—at least, not before she expired from it. Even the pain of contracting around the base of him only added to the experience, being pierced by him, and utterly filled and seeded—it was intensely satisfying on more levels than she had known existed—frighteningly so.

It would be easy for her to succumb to an addiction to such complete and total satisfaction. It was intrinsic to her nature for her to need and want that kind of deep, primitive connection with him—her Alpha. In those mind and body melding moments of pure paradise, it seemed entirely right that he should have complete command of her, to bestow pleasure and pain to her as he saw fit and to fill her—at every possible opportunity—with himself, his seed, and his children.

This time, they remained knotted for much longer as they both continued to spasm euphorically. He couldn't seem to get his fill of touching that velvety soft skin, his hands running over every inch of her, although his fingers always returned to stroke her clit lazily. He kept her right where he wanted her—continually riding the crest of peaks that never seemed to diminish in the least as she clenched him almost hard enough to stop his movements, such that he released a constant river of spunk as he rocked into her rhythmically, not leaving her until he had very nearly emptied himself into her.